Where Trump AG Pick Matt Gaetz Stands on Abortion, LGBTQ Rights and Criminal Justice
Where Trump AG Pick Matt Gaetz Stands on Abortion, LGBTQ Rights and Criminal Justice
Gaetz would lead the Department of Justice, which last year declined to bring charges against him in a sex trafficking investigation.
By Candice Norwood, Shefali Luthra, Orion Rummler, Amanda Becker
This article was originally published by the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he picked Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general, a choice that could put the Florida Republican in charge of the federal department that investigated him over sex trafficking accusations and ultimately decided not to bring charges.
“He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law,” Trump said in a statement. “Matt will root out the systemic corruption at DOJ, and return the Department to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution.”
Gaetz is one of several allies in Congress that Trump has picked for Cabinet-level positions.
As attorney general, Gaetz will be tasked with leading the Justice Department, which oversees federal investigations meant to ensure that government agencies uphold civil rights; that police departments are held accountable for misconduct; and that federal crimes, such as those committed in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, receive proper prosecution.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Gaetz said he would resign his House seat immediately. Gaetz had been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct. Responding to reporters’ questions about news of the nomination, House Ethics Chairman Michael Guest had said that the investigation would not continue if Gaetz was no longer a member of Congress.
Last year, the Department of Justice concluded its own probe into sex trafficking allegations and announced that it would not bring criminal charges against Gaetz. In 2021, federal prosecutors began investigating whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her travel after a probe into his close associate, Joel Greenberg, led to sex trafficking charges against Greenberg. In 2022, Greenberg pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking, stalking, wire fraud and identity theft, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Gaetz, 42, has served in the House since 2017 and was previously a state legislator for six years. He graduated from William & Mary Law School and worked in private practice at a firm before launching his political career.
Gaetz’s nomination will likely be controversial even in the GOP-controlled Senate, which confirms presidential nominees. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who generally takes the position that presidents deserve the right to staff their own administrations, said Wednesday she was “shocked” by Gaetz’ nomination. Collins is one of just two or three swing Republican votes, and any nominee will need at least 50 senators to be confirmed.
Trump has pushed for the Senate to embrace recess appointments, which essentially allow a president and majority leader to avoid the confirmation process. Senate Republicans on Wednesday picked Sen. John Thune of South Dakota as the majority leader. Thune expressed openness to using recess appointments, though he also emphasized the Senate’s role in the confirmation process and said he wanted committees to hold confirmation hearings.
Reproductive issues
The attorney general could influence pressing questions of abortion policy, such as whether to enforce the 1800s anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act, which abortion opponents believe could be used to ban the mailing of abortion pills — or even to ban abortion entirely. The current Department of Justice has not endorsed this view.
Gaetz has not publicly weighed in on the Comstock Act, and notably, he did not sign onto an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by a group of congressional Republicans that endorsed reviving the measure.
But as a member of Congress, Gaetz has opposed abortion rights, earning an A+ rating from the anti-abortion advocacy group SBA Pro-Life America. He voted against a bill that would have protected the right to contraception and in 2021 co-sponsored a proposed national ban on abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy.
Gaetz did not sign onto a bill proposed the next year — in September 2022, months after the overturn of Roe v. Wade sparked national outcry — that would have outlawed abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
That same year, he suggested that women advocating for reproductive rights protections were too unattractive to become pregnant, let alone need abortions. At a conference in Florida, he said, “Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
LGBTQ issues
The Justice Department under the Biden administration took an active role in supporting LGBTQ advocates, primarily through “friend of the court” briefs in cases defending gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Under Trump, this approach will likely be flipped on its head — particularly with Gaetz leading the agency.
In Congress, Gaetz has opposed federal LGBTQ protections such as the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in various areas of public life, and the Respect for Marriage Act, a law signed by President Joe Biden to protect LGBTQ marriage. Last year, he backed legislation to prevent school athletic programs from allowing trans girls to compete in girls’ sports.
During Trump’s first term, Gaetz celebrated the former president’s ban on transgender people serving in the military — and during Trump’s 2024 campaign, Gaetz leaned into rhetoric portraying trans people, particularly nonbinary or gender nonconforming people, as antithetical to America’s identity.
At the Republican National Convention, where multiple speakers verbally attacked transgender people, Gaetz reflected on Trump’s first term as a time when “we were richer, inflation was low, and there were two genders.”
After Trump made baseless claims on the campaign trail that U.S. schools are clandestinely performing gender-affirming surgeries on children, Gaetz appeared to support those unfounded claims, saying that parents in places like California and Washington state are “at risk of losing parental rights.”
Criminal justice issues
As a congressman, Gaetz has praised law enforcement and denounced some legislative efforts by Democrats to hold officers accountable for misconduct, signaling how he will consider these issues as attorney general. Though he has expressed interest in “meaningful reform,” he has accused Democrats of pushing an “anti-police” narrative.
In the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a White police officer who knelt on his neck for nine minutes, Gaetz stated, “While I think we can fine tune elements to ensure we don’t defund the police, that we don’t make our communities less safe, I do think there is not a legitimate defense of chokeholds, of lynching or bad cops that get shuttled around.” Two years later, however, he voted against a bill that sought to provide de-escalation training to officers.
Many of Gaetz’ concerns about public safety center around promoting misleading claims about crime rates in urban areas and unfounded connections between immigration and crime. In 2019, he stated that a proposed bill that sought to require background checks for guns would not stop violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, but that a “wall, a barrier on the southern border may have.” This year, he introduced the Allocating Liability to Illegal Entrants in National Courts (ALIEN) Act to allow federal judges to award damages to victims harmed by undocumented immigrants. The measure stalled and did not receive a vote.
